Saturday Q&A (oct 28)

It's a slow week.  I haven't written so much as I should, except time I've spent on my wiki.

Maxwell writes, offering rules for characters managing their equipment inventories:

While these rules are written with respect to PCs, they apply to all characters.

Item Locations
When a character obtains a new possession, his player adds it to the inventory section of the character sheet. In addition to recording the name, unit weight, and number carried for the item, the player must also choose the location on the body where the item is being carried.

Because the system is new, there is no definite list of item locations at this time, but they usually either correspond to specific parts of the body, such as "right hand" for a glove, or "head" for a cap. In addition, some items create additional locations, which is how this system models the carrying capacity of container-like items such as belts and backpacks.

For instance, if a character chooses to wear an equipment belt at his waist, he would mark its location as "at waist." If the character attached a scabbard and a pouch to that belt, each would have the location "waist belt." In turn, a sword carried in the scabbard would have the location "waist scabbard."

Similarly, a scabbard must be attached to a belt, and given the location "waist belt" or "shoulder belt." A sword must be carried in the right kind of scabbard, and noted as "in scabbard." A ring might be "on left index finger" or "on gold chain" (which is in turn "around neck.") And so on.

Loose Items
If a player neglects to choose a specific location in which to carry an item, or if the character does not have the specific slot required for a particular kind of item, the character can still carry the desired items by choosing not to give them a specific location on the body. Items carried in no specific location are given the location "?", and are called loose items.

Downsides of Loose Items

Losing Items

The most important downside of carrying loose items is that they may be lost while adventuring. The DM rolls a loss check at the end of every game day the characters spend traveling; like an initiative roll, one loss check applies to all characters in the party. A character is considered to be traveling on any day where none of the following are true:

• the character both began and ended the day within a settlement (not necessarily the same place both times)
• the character spent the day resting
• the character spent the day tending to personal affairs in one place, e.g. cleaning house, farming, or conducting training exercises

Dice: If traveling primarily in a type 8 hex, the loss check for that day is on a d6. In type 7 and 6 hexes, it's a d10. Above that, it's a d20.

Penalty: The longer a character spends traveling, the higher his chances of misplacing something. A loss check has a +X penalty, where X is either the number of days beyond 1 that the character has spent traveling, or the number of days since the last failed loss check, whichever is smaller. Therefore, the penalty resets to 0 every time a loss check fails.

A loss check fails if the result is equal or greater to the size of the die rolled.

For example, on the third day of traveling, if no loss checks have failed yet since beginning to travel, the penalty is +2. If the players spend the majority of that day in a type 8 hex, the die for the roll is d6. Thus, if a roll of d6+2 is 6 or greater, the loss check has failed.

On a failed loss check, each character currently traveling with the party, including NPCs and even pack animals, rolls a d20 for each loose item he is carrying. If the d20 comes up a 1, the associated item is lost. It may have been lost at any point in the last 24 hours, and unless the party uses magic or sage abilities to try locating it, it is lost for good.

As a sop to the players, if GP or other coinage is the item for which a 1 is rolled, only (d3+1)x10% of the total coinage will be lost.

No Protection from Saving Throws
The usual rules for item saving throws is that an item in a container only has to make an item save if the container fails its own save first. This provides clear mechanical justifications for putting spell books in protective containers, using scroll cases, and stowing loose goods in a backpack or pouch.

Though we may assume that loose items are crammed into bits of extra space on the character's person, because loose items aren't explicitly contained by or carried within something else, they are never considered sufficiently protected to avoid item saving throws in the above manner.

(Bonuses or penalties to item saves are unchanged for loose items. For instance, if one character's progenitor was a leatherworker, which grants the party's leather goods +2 on item saves, the party's loose items would get the bonus like anything else.)

Slow Retrieval
Loose items are harder to retrieve in combat.  No matter how light they are, or how close at hand they ought to be, they always take 2 AP to retrieve if less than 5 pounds, or 3 AP otherwise. This rule overrides certain other rules governing speed of item retrieval, including character background results (e.g. "character requires no AP to draw a weapon 3 pounds or less") and attack bonuses (e.g. normally, a character with a class attack bonus of +1 or greater, who expends 1 or more AP on movement, can simultaneously draw a one-handed weapon for 0 AP.)

Other interactions between rules affecting item retrieval and the slow retrieval rule will be decided as they arise through play.

 _____

Thank you Maxwell.

If anyone wishes to ask a question or submit observations like those above, please submit  to my email, alexiss1@telus.net.  If you could, please give the region where you're located (state, province, department, county, whatever) as it humanises your comment.

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